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"Feminist scholars and feminist expertise are rarely mentioned in the context of FS studies, and if so, relating mainly to topics such as the “gender gap” (Kelty 2008) or the “coproduction of gender and technology” (Faulkner 2001; Oudshoorn et al 2004)3. However, we claim that instead of merely assessing the gender ratios in the free software community, feminist theory can help to better understand the epistemology of free software – or more precisely the entanglement of epistemology, ethics and ontology; of knowing, being and acting. That is, while we agree that the free software movement has had profound effects on the epistemic practices involved in software creation, i.e. the ways in which software if produced, improved and modified collectively, it is insufficient to focus only the epistemic dimension. Instead, a performative understanding of knowledge requires us to understand and account for the fact that epistemic practices are inherently ethical practices because a) instead of merely representing what is there, they are also generative and b) they may have differential effects on different agents.
